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My first visit to playgroup: a volunteer group run by church pensioners that proved to be much more than that.

Sitting in the car and ready to roll, my first playgroup as a stay at home daddy and Im scared to death. My expectatnions: old-dears in tabbards, blck coffeee and hours of avoiding baby-chit with the same boring old mums as every other group., but was I wrong. Before leaving the car my eyes had been opened,a loook to the left changed my opinion in one simple strolke of the lip gloss. In a row, six women were applying the lippy, touching up the make-up and making themselves look presentable, the rest of the car park was little different. Suddenly I was desperate to get in there.

Mommy’s morning sickness is pretty bad, the baby gets me up unusually around 0700, I’m normally up hours before. normal routine: change, breakfast, play, but her face is getting worse, The spots around her mouth are turning into scabby, painful sores, plus she wont eat solid food – ulcers everywhere. So what did I do? take her shopping of course, there’s nothing than can’t be healed by retail therapy, even of it is Asda, a megastore none the less. We stop at the coffee shop for lunch, nothing abnormal but with a new smarter way of getting yogurt into her – yogurt lollies.Grreeat for the first minutes when she actually licked it like a lolly, then it became a squeezy toy, a paste for smudging on the faux leather couch and a new design for daddies shirt, a red head she loves up to type. Next time someone else can so it. Its noon, the yogurt debacle can count as lunch, so we’re off to Costa, they hae a toy corner, somewhere to keep her busy.

So there ae are,, Costa, playing with toys of which only a quarter have batteries in, thank god, imagine the noise. thankfully we are surrounded by an eastern european mother’s group, and they adore kids. There own 4/5 year olds provide enough fascination to keep Izzy busy for hours – at last some respite. ANd then the phone call, to follow the texts numbering double figures my mother.

“it might be impetigo you know”

for at least the fourth time she has informed me

“I’ve had impetigo, the spots are dry when popped”

yes I enjoy popping spots

“there are two types of impetigo, adults can pass it to babies via cold sores”

I had 8 cold sores the previous week due to infection, she may have a point. How annoying.

“get her to the doctors”

as super efficient as out doctor’s are, saturday is a little much to ask, so no mattter how much greensleaves, or will young you endure, there is no getting through. After more haranguing, in public, loud enough through the phone speaker for the world to heat we decamp to the pharmacist, yummy mummy bag and man bag shouldered; most manly.

me: “does the pharmacist have two minutes”

Pharmacist “On word Impetigo, Antibiotics”

Me:”thats two words actually”

I kept the last comment to myself as I was clearly on a loser already. So we stood there for tthe rest of the two minutes just staring into space really, a good 1:58 of nothing. For me it was bliss, she seemed glazed over. So its saturday, no doctors, and I don’t want to wait to get an appointment late next week sometime at some ungodly hour, so what doo we do?. Lets all go to the walk in center! Ive been there before, theh NHS are deperate to get people ointo them and it actually works quite well. Based in Erdington, a place even people from Erdington don’t want to go, a place for passing through at speed,. and it is our closest, so we have no option, Erdington it is.

Squashed in between an irish pub blaring a hammered jig at 1400, the kind of pub real real shoes look out of place and a seedy pawn shop the NHS walk in center is an air-conditioned haven, a place that feels like there should be little water falls, rock pools and a cabanan boy, that’ll render even the hardest of hearts a comfort on entry. its almost worth going in for the tranquility. Directed upstairs by the smartly suited security guard a smiling reception greets you and directs you to fill in your info on the standard clipboard: name , address, blood type, credit rating, favourite member of one direction, you know the standard stuff. Izzy struggled like always to be standing up, which she did and heading straight for my bag, found a protein bar, gotta keep toned getting older, to her the flavour, quality or value doesnt matter, she’ll chew it, not open, but untuil its brarely recognisable as a bar. This just happened to be a blueberry flavoured one, one of my favourites of bunch of foul-tasting feel god bars. So she chewed it, wrapper on, as always mashing ti beyond belief while keeping it wrapped. Luckily before long we were called it for triage with a nurse, avoiding the repeat of as time when she entertained a packed doctors surgery for forty minutes with ether bouncing or some other daddy-tiriging exerciise, so the nurse goes through the traditional blurb,

“why are you here today?”

I point at the spotty face,

“when did they start?

“dunno, week ago”

and that was about it, temperature taken and back in the waiting room we went, or at least into the nappy changing room, a dedicated room for changing napkins impressive, and its huge. No toilet though which is always useful. She didn’t really need a change she was just smelly, but i did it anyway, might as well after getting the shoes, socks and trousers off.

We leave the nappy changing room ready for a long wait, there’s a least 2 chaps slumped on those lovely plastic schoool-hall chairs who appear to be about to pass into gods waiting room, probably turn out tis an ingrowing toenail, and the death throes are for effect to sip the queue. miraculously our name is called before we have chance to join those about to expire and see a doctor…. looking nothing like Ronald McDonals and quite inappropriately named loon we diid the business:

“spots on her face, ulcer in the mouth, about two weeeks, pharmacist sent us here.”

I’ve done these things many times….

“Impetigo”

surprirse, surprsise

“has anyone had coldsores areound her at all?

I look at the floor guiltily

“me, I had 8 on my bottom lip and 2 in my mouth two weeks ago when in hospital”

so its all my fualt, for real this time, how will I ever live this down….

so why am I so worried? because I do all the work, all of it. Nights, days, feeds, you name it I do it….. the thought of two scares me to death and Ive got 7 months to stew on it.

The intenttion of this blog was to moan, I guess would be the best workd at that persistenetly sexist nature of ‘mother and baby’ signage, which I have been doing through twitter under the handle Bemused @ Home Daddy, and am surprising an increasingly number of modern signage has either unisex or male inclusive pictures, to my icreased surprise. I will continue ot disgrace and congratulate the winners and losers in this department but have much more fish to fry at the moment….. the one one thing on my mind, worrrying me to death, the coming of ‘Seb’, for if he is to be a boy we shall name him Sebastian.

In this blog I will keep a diary of the pregnanacy, the scans, my thoughts, fears, excitements and the odd little tit-bit I pickp up herre ans there from about the t place. It may look weird but I am approaching other people in that situation and asking how they got in on, tips, and ways forward. Rather unsursprisingly epoeple are desperate to talk about their own kids, their own expereiences and what they found worked fort them

today, in a quesue in Costa, who just happen to have fantastic changing facilities at most venues and most helpful staff who cannot do enough, in front of me in the queue stood a double buggie – the stacked type rather than the end of the world parallel type – this young lady was more thna happy to discuss the situattion:

she had 2 under 2, bothe with very similar birth dates (save on the party costs I think not), she also had another half who worked many and long hours leaving her lumbereed wiwith much of the work. Her first word was ‘Horrendous! with exclamations excluded., but quickly gets better when a routine is established. A routine, how often do I heara that as a new parent, routine thiis, routine that, and my only lesson so faar is ignore it at your peril! Getting into a routine is essential, when one is feeding one is playing. For the first three months there is no going out to eat etc, until the routines are firm. This mom herself had drawn up a whiteboard, dividided it into a grid and placed tasks within them. During the days, when I was concerned with groups etc for the older one thees are out, the younger one requiring much more sleep meant walks were very useful, particuarly to the swrings where she had visiited everyday, byt the time they reach the park the younger was aslpeep and the older could have his mommy time…..

dollies : Before the birth of the second they had given their youngest a dolly, so sa to get used to having a baby around, when they second was born she could then be feeding her dollly while mommy fed younger brother, and due to the pltehera of dolls available on the market of all stages, a new doll could be added the older her younger brother got. Of all the suggestions I thin this sounded quite usefull… and will atake this to be the suggestion of the day….

……after a few months it will get easier, so she says, butat least so they all say.

I do not know how much of these tips work but am going to be having to give them a good go!!!